Why do people say LP's should be banned?

[Tony's Table Tennis]

I did not know who she is. Hint: the answer can be found here:

https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/who-are-your-top-10-table-tennis-players.33577/#post-452292

if she was male, she would be in the same sentence as JO Waldner and Ma Long
Deng Yaping was deemed too short to make it into the national team.
until she beat all the chinese champions and national team members in the Chinese national championships and CNT was forced to award her a spot in the national team.
since then, she has the most golds than any other player and she retired so early too, and is the first PHD of table tennis.

Deng Yaping said something that stayed with me all these years - she said she used to serve 1 hour a day, everyday, after practice. I'm not sure how many pros today still do this....not many I would think.
I tried to do that as far as possible in my younger days.

 

[longrange]

I never said that. What I said was "I would like to think most table tennis players can understand that there is a clear and qualitative difference between (a) using a rubber cleaner to restore the rubbers original playing characteristics, and (b) using some form of treatment to change the rubbers original/intended playing characteristics".

Since when is booster considered to be a rubber cleaner?

So, you allow one physical treatment to restore original playing characteristics, but forbid another physicochemical treatment to restore original playing characteristics. I see a little bit of double standards here.

 

[ViperTableTennis]

So, you allow one physical treatment to restore original playing characteristics, but forbid another physicochemical treatment to restore original playing characteristics. I see a little bit of double standards here.

The line has to be drawn somewhere and that will inevitably result in certain types of actions being acceptable and others being unacceptable. That's not double-standards, it's just an inevitable consequence of having an organised sport with a set of rules. If you genuinely think that wiping a rubber with water/sweat/rubber cleaner is equivalent to boosting the rubber, then I think this indicates not double standards in the rules, but rather a failure on your part to understand the qualitative difference between those two actions and the effect that they have.

 

[NextLevel]

I never said that. What I said was "I would like to think most table tennis players can understand that there is a clear and qualitative difference between (a) using a rubber cleaner to restore the rubbers original playing characteristics, and (b) using some form of treatment to change the rubbers original/intended playing characteristics".

Since when is booster considered to be a rubber cleaner?

No need to try to make this sound like the people who disagree with you don't know something you do. It's always been clear that in addition to being unenforceable since the use of boosters largely replicate manufacturing processes of boosted rubbers, the language around racket treatment is too vague to be taken literally and relies on accepted intent.

But if you want to argue this from a position of intellectual or moral superiority, go ahead, educate the bad idiots and show them how good and smart you are.

 

[longrange]

The line has to be drawn somewhere and that will inevitably result in certain types of actions being acceptable and others being unacceptable. That's not double-standards, it's just an inevitable consequence of having an organised sport with a set of rules.

I don't see a single reason for any line here, maybe you can come up with one? But before you appealed to "it's against the rules" again, let me remind you the official stance of the rules with plain language:
1. Boosting is bad
2. Boosting by rubber cartel is ok.

If you genuinely think that wiping a rubber with water/sweat/rubber cleaner is equivalent to boosting the rubber, then I think this indicates not double standards in the rules, but rather a failure on your part to understand the qualitative difference between those two actions and the effect that they have

I think you think that you are smarter than ITTF+rubber cartel. If they could come up with a form prohibition, which didn't hurt them in the first place, they would've. And I think I know enough chemistry to figure out that they can't avoid booster-like substances in their manufacturing processes.

 

[Metaxa]

You are allowed to ask me questions as well, you are claiming I misrepresented you, but I am pretty sure I did not. Your hate and disdain for people who play with pips shines through everything you write, you come from a place where pips means that the person couldn't play with inverted, therefore he switched to pips to hide his inability to play with inverted. You probably never met people with a talent for doing certain things and realizing that inverted made those things hard to do, therefore pips were better for them. Hitting and driving the ball is one of those, blocking is another. I have even met players who are very good at hitting the ball with backspin or sidespin, again easier to do with pips, but I know one guy who did it to about 2300 level with inverted.

The game used to be played with pips and some people still play with pips. I worked with a coach who used to chop with pips. I was a hitter when I first played because that was my natural instinct like most players who never really learned to spin the ball. I tried pips for a short while, didn't like them, but many people used to complain that even with inverted I played pips strokes. If I had changed to pips, it would have had little to do with a technical limitation, it would have been simply to enable me to play the game I played best at the time, which was close to the table hitting.

I then had another coach who thought like you, but his own reasoning was not like yours - he felt that all the best players in the world were using inverted, so if you used pips, you were making it harder to be one of the best players in the world, so he always discouraged me from using them, and encouraged me to learn how to play against and beat them. So he would train all his students to play against pips so that we wouldn't lose points to pips players.

So I get the hate for something that you don't respect, but again, the game is about putting the ball on the table, some people do not want all the bells and whistles that inverted adds with spin production when they are doing this. To some degree, inverted and the higher levels of speed gluing etc. have ruined the sport. But people like you will never admit that with how you think.

All the pip players I know in table tennis since 1976 once started with normal reverse rubbers. All tell the same thing, because certain strokes did not succeed they switched to other technical equipment and got better with it. Some even improved a lot through training and at all levels. Which in itself is also to the player's credit of course, but then I ask myself, why didn't they spend more time to achieve this with a classic (inverted) rubber?
But, I think they have always answered the topic starter's question and in so many other topics on this subject, themselves.
Final conclusion, do LP/SP or anti-materials help with furthering your own shortcomings, short answer, YES.
Everything else is factually irrelevant.

 

[Metaxa]

Most people who know the lady pictured above and that she used long pips on her backhand would realize how ridiculous the technical argument is without context.

Do me a favour and ask her why she started playing with these rubbers back then? Ask her! Will you?

 

[ViperTableTennis]

No need to try to make this sound like the people who disagree with you don't know something you do. It's always been clear that in addition to being unenforceable since the use of boosters largely replicate manufacturing processes of boosted rubbers, the language around racket treatment is too vague to be taken literally and relies on accepted intent.

But if you want to argue this from a position of intellectual or moral superiority, go ahead, educate the bad idiots and show them how good and smart you are.

If they don't know the rule then they don't know something I know, though! Based on the comment longrange made, it seemed a reasonable assumption he/she was ignorant of the rule. Enforceability of the rule is a separate issue to whether or not it is a rule, but my hope would be that most players would have the integrity to follow the rules even if they think no one is watching.

 

[ViperTableTennis]

I don't see a single reason for any line here, maybe you can come up with one? But before you appealed to "it's against the rules" again, let me remind you the official stance of the rules with plain language:
1. Boosting is bad
2. Boosting by rubber cartel is ok.

I think you think that you are smarter than ITTF+rubber cartel. If they could come up with a form prohibition, which didn't hurt them in the first place, they would've. And I think I know enough chemistry to figure out that they can't avoid booster-like substances in their manufacturing processes.

Yes, I can come up with a 'line' for you. Table tennis operates on the basis that the governing body produces a list of authorised racket coverings (LARC). For this list to have any meaning, there must also be rules that prohibit the modification of racket coverings after they have gone through the (manufacture and) ITTF approval process. So, in reality, the stance is not that "boosting is bad, but boosting by the rubber cartel is OK"....the stance is simply that rubbers must not be changed into something different to what was approved by ITTF. This means that boosting isn't inherently illegal per se, but rather it's a timing issue; rubbers that are manufactured with booster and therefore submitted for approval with booster already present are within the rules, but rubbers that are boosted by a player are being boosted post-approval and are therefore not OK.

It's quite a simple concept really; all you've got to do is pick a rubber from the LARC, glue it on your bat (with legal glue) and play with it. If you're doing anything else to it you might be breaking the rules...and if you're boosting it you're definitely breaking the rules.

 

[Tony's Table Tennis]

Yes, I can come up with a 'line' for you. Table tennis operates on the basis that the governing body produces a list of authorised racket coverings (LARC). For this list to have any meaning, there must also be rules that prohibit the modification of racket coverings after they have gone through the (manufacture and) ITTF approval process. So, in reality, the stance is not that "boosting is bad, but boosting by the rubber cartel is OK"....the stance is simply that rubbers must not be changed into something different to what was approved by ITTF. This means that boosting isn't inherently illegal per se, but rather it's a timing issue; rubbers that are manufactured with booster and therefore submitted for approval with booster already present are within the rules, but rubbers that are boosted by a player are being boosted post-approval and are therefore not OK.

It's quite a simple concept really; all you've got to do is pick a rubber from the LARC, glue it on your bat (with legal glue) and play with it. If you're doing anything else to it you might be breaking the rules...and if you're boosting it you're definitely breaking the rules.

sorry to surprise you but there isn't any sponge on LARC
1 topsheet on larc can have dozens of sponges
some are not even retail

boosting is on the sponge

as I said, there is a problem on ITTF rulings wording.
you don't need to be dumb or smart to know that.

Now, the problem is, how can you have vague wording and then open up cans of worms for mis/interpretation?
rubber cleaner, h2o, sweat is all illegal
but some are fine, some are not - who makes that call? and with what? naked eye?
there is no machine to detect booster, other than thickness or voc
boosters don't have voc, so voc is out.
thickness - one don't need booster to get over the thickness

so, set rules, but you need to be able to be
1) clear on the rules
2) police them

so, the thing about manufacture, is indeed cartel.
ITTF can't police that, so it is "allowed" and they think all the sheeps will just follow. but pros are not sheeps

IF DHS staff travels with CNT and do the boosting for CNT players - that is deem legal or not? you tell me?

 

[ViperTableTennis]

sorry to surprise you but there isn't any sponge on LARC
1 topsheet on larc can have dozens of sponges
some are not even retail

boosting is on the sponge

as I said, there is a problem on ITTF rulings wording.
you don't need to be dumb or smart to know that.

Now, the problem is, how can you have vague wording and then open up cans of worms for mis/interpretation?
rubber cleaner, h2o, sweat is all illegal
but some are fine, some are not - who makes that call? and with what? naked eye?
there is no machine to detect booster, other than thickness or voc
boosters don't have voc, so voc is out.
thickness - one don't need booster to get over the thickness

so, set rules, but you need to be able to be
1) clear on the rules
2) police them

so, the thing about manufacture, is indeed cartel.
ITTF can't police that, so it is "allowed" and they think all the sheeps will just follow. but pros are not sheeps

IF DHS staff travels with CNT and do the boosting for CNT players - that is deem legal or not? you tell me?

I think you're getting a bit "lost in the weeds" here. Rule 2.4.7 clearly prohibits players from boosting racket coverings on account of such action being a "chemical treatment" of the racket covering. I agree that rule 2.4.7 is poorly worded...but only in the sense that its vagueness could be interpreted as too all-encompassing (such that some interpretations could also suggest that it prohibits the use of rubber cleaner etc), but there is no way that you can reasonably argue that this rule doesn't prohibit the post-manufacture boosting of racket coverings by players.

The issue of enforceability is of course important, but the enforceability of a rule is distinct from the rule itself. If you are breaking the rule then you are cheating, irrespective of whether you get caught or not...and irrespective of whether you can be caught based on the testing infrastructure in place.

Like I said before, as long as you buy a LARC-listed racket covering and do not "tamper" with it in any way (meaning that you are not making any post-manufacture modifications), then you have nothing to worry about. If you are carrying out any kind of post-manufacture treatment to that racket covering then it might be against the rules...but there are some types of treatment that we know for certain are against the rules, one example being the post-manufacture use of boosters by players.

If DHS staff travels with the CNT and does the boosting, I would argue that this is illegal since it is post-manufacture boosting of a racket-covering. However, if the DHS staff are taking a brand-new racket covering out of the packaging and gluing it onto the players blade, and this racket covering was manufactured with booster, then I would argue that this is legal.

 

[NextLevel]

If they don't know the rule then they don't know something I know, though! Based on the comment longrange made, it seemed a reasonable assumption he/she was ignorant of the rule. Enforceability of the rule is a separate issue to whether or not it is a rule, but my hope would be that most players would have the integrity to follow the rules even if they think no one is watching.

No, I think there are good reasons to ignore an unenfoeceble rule, especially one badly written, in an age where we see the serve rule is terribly enforced and the rule was made largely to keep TT manufacturers profitable and little elae.

 

[NextLevel]

I think you're getting a bit "lost in the weeds" here. Rule 2.4.7 clearly prohibits players from boosting racket coverings on account of such action being a "chemical treatment" of the racket covering. I agree that rule 2.4.7 is poorly worded...but only in the sense that its vagueness could be interpreted as too all-encompassing (such that some interpretations could also suggest that it prohibits the use of rubber cleaner etc), but there is no way that you can reasonably argue that this rule doesn't prohibit the post-manufacture boosting of racket coverings by players.

The issue of enforceability is of course important, but the enforceability of a rule is distinct from the rule itself. If you are breaking the rule then you are cheating, irrespective of whether you get caught or not...and irrespective of whether you can be caught based on the testing infrastructure in place.

Like I said before, as long as you buy a LARC-listed racket covering and do not "tamper" with it in any way (meaning that you are not making any post-manufacture modifications), then you have nothing to worry about. If you are carrying out any kind of post-manufacture treatment to that racket covering then it might be against the rules...but there are some types of treatment that we know for certain are against the rules, one example being the post-manufacture use of boosters by players.

If DHS staff travels with the CNT and does the boosting, I would argue that this is illegal since it is post-manufacture boosting of a racket-covering. However, if the DHS staff are taking a brand-new racket covering out of the packaging and gluing it onto the players blade, and this racket covering was manufactured with booster, then I would argue that this is legal.

You can argue all you want, but almost all professionals are boosting in one way or another. It is hard to play table tennis at the top levels without well boosted rubbers either by the manufacturer or in may cases yourself. All the ITTF can measure is racket thickness. They should have made rules that were enforceable and their motives for not doing so are not entirely pure.

 

[NextLevel]

Yes, I can come up with a 'line' for you. Table tennis operates on the basis that the governing body produces a list of authorised racket coverings (LARC). For this list to have any meaning, there must also be rules that prohibit the modification of racket coverings after they have gone through the (manufacture and) ITTF approval process. So, in reality, the stance is not that "boosting is bad, but boosting by the rubber cartel is OK"....the stance is simply that rubbers must not be changed into something different to what was approved by ITTF. This means that boosting isn't inherently illegal per se, but rather it's a timing issue; rubbers that are manufactured with booster and therefore submitted for approval with booster already present are within the rules, but rubbers that are boosted by a player are being boosted post-approval and are therefore not OK.

It's quite a simple concept really; all you've got to do is pick a rubber from the LARC, glue it on your bat (with legal glue) and play with it. If you're doing anything else to it you might be breaking the rules...and if you're boosting it you're definitely breaking the rules.

And if you use rubber cleaner, which can increase or reduce the tackiness or oil content of the rubber, you are not?

 

[longrange]

Yes, I can come up with a 'line' for you. Table tennis operates on the basis that the governing body produces a list of authorised racket coverings (LARC). For this list to have any meaning, there must also be rules that prohibit the modification of racket coverings after they have gone through the (manufacture and) ITTF approval process. So, in reality, the stance is not that "boosting is bad, but boosting by the rubber cartel is OK"....the stance is simply that rubbers must not be changed into something different to what was approved by ITTF. This means that boosting isn't inherently illegal per se, but rather it's a timing issue; rubbers that are manufactured with booster and therefore submitted for approval with booster already present are within the rules, but rubbers that are boosted by a player are being boosted post-approval and are therefore not OK.

So, you again imply that once the factory boosting wears off from my Rasanter 53 I must boost it, otherwise it's something different from what was presented to ITTF. Well, if you say so 🤷🏻‍♂️

 

[NextLevel]

All the pip players I know in table tennis since 1976 once started with normal reverse rubbers. All tell the same thing, because certain strokes did not succeed they switched to other technical equipment and got better with it. Some even improved a lot through training and at all levels. Which in itself is also to the player's credit of course, but then I ask myself, why didn't they spend more time to achieve this with a classic (inverted) rubber?
But, I think they have always answered the topic starter's question and in so many other topics on this subject, themselves.
Final conclusion, do LP/SP or anti-materials help with furthering your own shortcomings, short answer, YES.
Everything else is factually irrelevant.

Do you know any players who wanted to become choppers or play like Wang Tao or Deng Yaping or He Zhi Wen or Johnny Huang? Maybe you just dont know that many players.

Ai Fukuhara and Mima Ito - you think they were influenced by Deng or some prior player or you seriously believe they don't know how to backhand loop?

 

[Metaxa]

Do you know any players who wanted to become choppers or play like Wang Tao or Deng Yaping or He Zhi Wen or Johnny Huang? Maybe you just dont know that many players.

Ai Fukuhara and Mima Ito - you think they were influenced by Deng or some prior player or you seriously believe they don't know how to backhand loop?

Hahaha no, I don't know anyone who wanted to be a defender. In my time, everyone wanted to be JM Saive, Waldner, Gatien or Samsonov. Now they want to be Truls, FZN, Ma Long, Gauzy or one of the Lebruns.

 

[NextLevel]

Hahaha no, I don't know anyone who wanted to be a defender. In my time, everyone wanted to be JM Saive, Waldner, Gatien or Samsonov. Now they want to be Truls, FZN, Ma Long, Gauzy or one of the Lebruns.

Exactly. I know players who wanted to be defenders. I know players who idolized others who used pips. You just dont know enough players.

 

[kindof99]

Time flies, and the talk on lp still on...

 

[Metaxa]

Exactly. I know players who wanted to be defenders. I know players who idolized others who used pips. You just dont know enough players.

Mmmm, I was in Birmingham in 1977, Bern in 80 (with J. Hilton...🥲), Paris in 88 and the World Cup in Rotterdam in 2011. In between, I saw many international matches of the national team, European meetings with Villette Charleroi, demonstrations, etc...etc...so I have seen and met quite a lot.
Don't get too personal.